NEW DELHI: A strident socialist, the 63year old Chandrashekhar has made his presence felt in the political life of the country in the past three decades but with a unique distinction of not having held any ministerial office.
Chandrashekhar has all along remained outside the precincts of governmental power a fact that has almost given him the image of an enigma.
Born on July 1, 1927, at Ibrahampatti of Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh, Chandrashekhar was drawn to the socialist fold by the influence of Acharya Narendra Dey in his college days in Allahabad where he majored in political science.
A firebrand in his student days, he led the 1949 movement against a fee increase and the agitation of 1953 for autonomy of student unions,
He gave up his research in political science at Varanasi in 1955 when Narendra Dey asked him to become a fulltime joint secretary of the U P unit of the Praja Socialist Party.
Chandra Shekhar was defeated in his first attempt at national politics in 1957 when he was defeated in the Lok Sabha election from Gazipur Ballia. Losing by a small margin, Chandrashekhar was made PSP secretary for its U P unit the following year.
Entering the Rajya Sabha on a PSP ticket in 1962, Chandrashekhar, however, left the party two years later along with Ashoka Mehta who promptly joined the Congress. Chandrashekhar waited for 18 months to follow suit.
Within months of his baptism in the Indian National Congress, he joined hands with Mohan Dharia and Krishna Kant to from a ginger group in November 1965 to promote a leftist, but anticommunist line. This trio soon came to be known as the young turks, a name that stuck with them.
The three were behind Ashoka Mehta in actively canvassing the succession of Indira Gandhi following the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. Subsequently they took up cudgels on behalf of her against the old party bosses known as ‘syndicate’ during the 1969 party crisis which led to the first split of the Congress,
When in Congress, Chandra Shekhar along with the other young turks, actively promoted the 10point economic programme, particularly bank nationalisation and the abolition of privy purses and privileges.
He, however, grew disillusioned with Indira Gandhi soon after her final triumph over the guard in the party. In May 1971, he expressed his misgivings and issued a warning to Indira against deviating from polices pledged to the people.
He used the “Young India Weekly” which he had launched around that time to air his views freely. Which displeased Indira.
He got elected against her wishes to the central election committee at the AICC in Shimla in 1971 and reelected to the CWC at Calcutta in 1972.
Chandra Shekhar later began supporting the anticorruption movement launched by Jayaprakash Narayan in 1974 and her next year he got his friend Ram Dhan elected as a secretary of the congress parliamentary party in 1975.
Always a champion of popular causes, Chandra Shekhar advocated a dialogue between JP and Indira during the height of the “total revolution” agitation.
As a first step to forge opposition unity after the 1984 Lok Sabha polls, Shekhar persuaded the Lok Dal (A) led by Ajit Singh to merge with the Janata Party and also stepped down as party president in favour of the latter.
The post 1987 political scene in the wake of scandals such as Bofors gun deal and HDW deal, pushed V.P. Singh to the fore and Chandrashekhar was seen to be sidelined.
He gave the impression of being cool towards Singh and showed no outward enthusiasm in the formation of the Janata Dal which came into being with merger of ‘opposition groups before the 1989 poll.
After the party’s victory in the poll, Chandra Shekhar was thought to be a candidate for the prime minister’s chair though he himself had not spelt out his intention in so many words.
However, he openly showed his resentment at the way V.P.Singh was elected leader of the Janata Dal parliamentary party and called the election “a conspiracy”.
In the following eleven months the V P Singh’s ministry was in office, Chandra Shekhar was seen to be effectively sidelined till the BJP’s decision to withdraw support to the government, pushing V.P. Singh’s ministry to the precipice.
And the bearded enigma that is Chandrashekhar emerged as the man of the moment.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 16, 1990
